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Feb 03, 2021 Jaialai By Caleb Campbell Photography by Julieta Romina

With their 2019 debut LP Say So, the Miami-based four-piece Jaialai confirmed the captivating potential of their blend of shoegaze and psych rock. The band followed the record with an EP in early 2020 before the pandemic locked down any possibility for touring. In response, the band got back to writing, committing new energy to their work just to keep afloat. Initially written and recorded over email and phone calls, their debut EP on Super Music Group, As Sweet As I Was, slowly coalesced. The band is now back with the latest track from their upcoming EP, “Vesuvius,” premiering with Under the Radar.

If there’s one element “Vesuvius” and the titular volcano hold in common, it’s explosiveness. The opening muted guitar line quickly turns to an incendiary guitar riff, driving the song forward with ferocious energy. The fuzzed-out instrumentation lends a slightly psychedelic feel, one that only gets more potent with the hazy vocals and ringing, insistent piano lines carrying the track to its end. It’s an exceptionally catchy combination, one that the band carries off to supurb effect as the lyrics reflect on America’s equally explosive political climate.

Singer and guitarist Oscar Sardiñas says of the song, “‘Vesuvius’ was written on the day the George Floyd protests started. I was watching the news and was moved but also feeling a bit of sensory overload. Massive nationwide protests amidst a pandemic during a Trump presidency…That period in time exposed deep wounds this country has yet to heal.”

He continues, “The song came out immediately, I was noodling around on the guitar for a little while, playing whatever…I was ready to put it down, and I heard the riff in my head. I sat back down, opened up Logic, and hit record. The whole song came out at that moment, guitar, beat, melody, even lyrics, which never happens for me. It was all there. The song really took off when we recorded it with Ryan, and we started messing around with guitar pedals and trying to fuzz the fuck out of it. He and Jovi wanted to extend the outro and add the acoustic part with the piano and the xylophone. That ended up being my favorite moment in the song, it doubles down on the looking to find peace message behind it.”

The accompanying video plays into both the fiery energy and psychedelic aesthetics of the track, depicting the song’s themes of social unrest with trippy post-apocalyptic animation. Director Manuel Fermont says of the video, “The Vesuvius video has a strong inspiration in Alan Moore’s graphic novels such as Watchmen and V for Vendetta, at the moment I heard the song along with the lyrics, I was transported to this place that we all know exists but we usually ignore, a place of inequality, the black market, megacorporations, and governments corroded to the guts, senseless wars and exploitation, where there are means of communication tabloids and that mold the collective hysteria at will. Vesuvius is the sums these events up fairly well yet also provides escape from them.” Check out the song below and watch for As Sweet As I Was, coming March 12 via Super Music Group.